 So, we're going to get started with some songs. We are the center of Vermont Solidarity Singers, you know, the labor movement, and so many other movements have had singing at the center of their movements. So, we're going to start with a song that's called Response. It's called Rise Up, so we'll sing a line and you need to sing it back to us. It goes like this, rise up, we're going to rise up, rise up, we're going to rise up, rise up, we're going to rise up, rise up, we're going to rise up. We ain't gonna let nobody turn us around, we ain't gonna let nobody turn us around, because the people united will stand our ground, because the people united will stand our ground. Stand strong. We gotta stand strong. Stand strong. We gotta stand strong. Stand strong. We gotta stand strong. Stand strong. We gotta stand strong. The powers that we can keep us down. We're gonna rise up and turn the world around. The people are marching, so get on your feet The people are marching, so get on your feet The people are ready, so follow their lead We're gonna end all this violence, this hatred We're gonna end all this violence, this hatred, and greed. So rise up, we gotta rise up. Rise up, we gotta rise up. Rise up, we gotta rise up. Rise up, we gotta rise up. We ain't gonna let nobody turn us around. We ain't gonna let nobody turn us around. Because the people united will stand our ground. Because the people united will stand our ground. Alright, so the next song on your song sheet. This is one, actually for some of you who are at the, some of the earlier workshops and panels today, you might have heard us, you sung us with us. But it's a song that comes out of organizing in North Carolina around coal ash. And it's really fitting with the theme of the day. So it's, you know, your struggle is my struggle. Someone's hurting my neighbor, my sister, my brother, our families, and it's gone on far too long. And the way this works is we'll sing the kind of calm. And everywhere where there's an underline, that's where you sing with us. So it's gone on far too long. And you'll pick it up. We'll sing it a number of times. You can sing any part you want. But if you don't want to sing anything else, at least sing far too long. So somebody's hurting my brother. And it's gone on far too long. Oh, it's gone on far too long. Yes, it's gone on far too long. Somebody's hurting my brother. And it's gone on far too long. And we won't be silent anymore. Somebody's hurting my sister. Somebody's hurting my sister. And it's gone on far too long. Oh, it's gone on far too long. Yes, it's gone on far too long. Somebody's hurting my sister. And it's gone on far too long. And we won't be silent anymore. Somebody's hurting our children. And it's gone on far too long. Yes, it's gone on far too long. It's gone on far too long. Somebody's hurting our children. And it's gone on far too long. And we won't be silent anymore. Let's say, ticking our healthcare for this one. Somebody's taking our healthcare. And it's gone on far too long. Oh, it's gone on far too long. Somebody's taking our healthcare. And it's gone on far too long. And we won't be silent anymore. Somebody's closing our borders. And it's gone on far too long. Yes, it's gone on far too long. Oh, it's gone on far too long. Somebody's closing the border too long. And we won't be silent anymore. It's closed with the people. Somebody's hurting the people. And it's gone on far too long. Oh, it's gone on far too long. Yes, it's gone on far too long. Somebody's hurting the people. And it's gone on far too long. Be silent anymore. It's a song that really speaks to saying that we're not alone. We have each other, no matter what's happening. We're going to move forward. We're going to leave with love. And we're going to do that together. So this is another one that has a chorus and then a column response. Yes. Put one foot in front of the other. And leave with. Put one foot in front of the other. And leave with love. And leave with love. Don't give up hope. Don't give up hope. You're not alone. Don't you give up. Don't you give up. Keep moving on. Keep moving on. You gotta put one foot in front of the other. And leave. We're in church of Montpelier and she's going to open. And struggle to provide sustenance and wash dishes. And to go home. And to often depend on the generosity of customers to make ends meet. We honor the construction workers who push their physical limits to build our homes and places of work and worship to build bridges and pave our roads, care workers and health care workers who tend to the physical and emotional needs of the young, the elderly and the sick. We honor our teachers and educators who cultivate the minds and hearts of our children. We honor all those whose work are the threads that keep our communities stitched together and who too often feel frayed by low wages, lack of health care and unaffordable housing costs. We join in solidarity and prayer today to call on our legislators and elected officials to act on the cries for justice in our communities. We join in solidarity and prayer to call on all owners and managers to recognize the dignity of workers and to uphold the standards of our moral values and faith traditions by providing living wages, affordable benefits and the freedom of association. Holy God, divine source who we call by many names be with us in our struggle for dignity in the workplace for a living wage and for fair benefits. Bless all of us as we continue working to bring forth our collective vision, a vision for justice and peace, kindness and compassion, grace and mercy. Amen. And because together we are unstoppable, juntos venceremos. This event has been hosted by the Vermont Human Rights Council comprised of 350 Vermont, Green Mountain Labor Council, Green Mountain Self-Advocates, Justice for All, Migrant Justice, Justicia Migrante, National Lawyers Guild, Peace and Justice Center, Price Center, Vermont, Rights and Democracy, Vermont, Ruto Vermont, U.E. Local 203, U.L. Local 255, United Academics UVM, Vermont Center for Independent Living, Vermont Worker Center, and Vermont Interfaith Action. Let's give them a round of applause. Introduce you to Brenda Churchill. She represents Church and Democracy and the LGBTQIA Alliance. Thank you. Thank you, Amanda. I think she met Rights and Democracy and I just, I'm going to hold this self on up. This is a trick I learned. Good afternoon, everybody. I guess I drew the short straw and I get to go first. I wanted to thank Emma Schoenberg for inviting me to speak this afternoon, Rights and Democracy, and I wanted to let you know I represent the LGBTQIA Alliance of Vermont and Rad today. On the first day, yep, on the first day of May, this is Workers' Rights Day. In the past, I've testified in support of many bills, but none is important to my community than S40 raising the minimum wage and S196, a bill that would create paid family leave. I want to tell you about my experience with paid family leave. I could sum it up by simply stating that I've been covered by several collective bargaining agreements for the result, for being a union member for the past 35 years. As a member of the United Auto Workers and until I retired, the Communication Workers of America, these benefits brought me the ability to pay my bills on time, buy food for my family, and most importantly, get healthy again. I will admit that having this benefit was a privilege that went above average wages and health insurance. I'm going to repeat that. My paid family leave was in combination with good wages and health insurance. Without these three things, I would not be alive to speak to you this afternoon. Paid family leave is a cornerstone benefit that is clearly something every member of my LGBTQ community needs. Shifting gears to S40, I want to speak about the state of Maine that raised their minimum wage in 2016. Equality Maine, a statewide LGBTQ organization, issued the following statement regarding wages and the LGBTQ community. The unfortunate reality is that the biased attitudes and discrimination limit the economic opportunities available to many LGBTQ people. As a result, low wage jobs and limited access to high-paying jobs contribute to disproportionate rates of poverty in our community. The impact is staggering. Recent studies have shown that LGBTQ couples raising children are twice as likely to live at poverty line compared to non-LGBTQ parents. And transgendered people are nearly four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 a year compared to the population as a whole. As our work to combat the bias and discrimination that perpetuates these disparities is ongoing, raising the minimum wage would make an immediate and significant difference for members of our community who are struggling. The LGBTQIA Alliance of Vermont echoes these statements of equality Maine and views the passage of S40 as being the single most direct and effective step which Vermont can take in response to these pay inequities. When you add paid family leave to raising the wage, you will begin to bring all Vermonters that are in marginalized communities together in a much better place. We're going to ask Governor Scott to once again lead in protecting all Vermonters in signing S40 and S196. Thank you for listening to me speak today. Because if we can't have it, shut it down. If we can't have it. Thanks so much everyone for being here today. It means so much for Green Mountain Self-Advocates and the Vermont Human Rights Council to have our family come together on May Day at the State House. You may think it's funny for me to refer to you as my family, but if you give it some thought, we are together in terms of standing up for each other in what is right. Just like brothers and sisters, we've got each other's backs. Right now, we are in a time of uncertainty. There are a lot of issues that we must pay attention to and decisions will be made that will affect us all. However, despite all of this, I am grateful to be a part of such a strong movement where no matter what, we are here and we are not going anywhere. We are the Vermont Human Rights Council. We organize together to advance human rights and ecological justice in Vermont. We embody the power of thousands of Vermont voices. Here are some of the groups that belong to the Human Rights Council. 350 Vermont, Green Mountain Self-Advocates, Justice for All, Migrant Justice, the Peace and Justice Center, Rights and Democracy, Rural Vermont, United Academics, the Vermont Center for Independent Living, the Vermont Interfaith Action, and the Vermont Worker Center. Thanks to all of you for being on board with our movement supporting us every step of the way. To all activists here, all over the state, country and the world, thanks for keeping us all, as peers strongly connected by speaking up and speaking truth to power. We are the engine that keeps the train moving along the track toward economic justice, racial justice and a livable planet under the banner of one movement for people and the planet. Let's keep it going. We gather here at the State House with a message of justice, equity and unity. In a political climate where our struggles are seen as an inconvenience to protecting a bottom line, we must come together and rally for our human rights. This will not only be a moment to hold elected officials accountable, but to build a stronger movement for ourselves. The Human Rights Council shows how we are more powerful when we act together. We build unity among ourselves and fight for human dignity. The bills that our legislation decides upon will be only one step toward keeping Vermont families housed, healthy and safe. So however, now more than ever, we need to come together and tackle issues of systemic racism and income equality within our own communities and within ourselves. Please join us in lifting up a message of unity and solidarity as we head into a long summer of working together for our human rights. Thank you. Because the people united nations to let us continue the work, to let all this group continue to be together, continue to push reform of justice. And there's some buckets coming up, reaching to your pocket. And I introduce you to Michelle Salba. I am for 20 years now. I'm also a member of the Green Mountain Labor Council, in the New Leaf. I'm Ted Coleman. I am a member of Vermont NEA and Vermont Workers Center and standing here with Vermont Labor United today. International Workers Day. It's the day that we celebrate the achievement of workers in making our world a better place for all of us to live. Because workers' rights are human rights. So it doesn't seem that there's too much for workers to celebrate. Our democracy is in the hands of money, power, and global capitalism rules. That's right. More attacks than ever are being directed at Vermont's workers. And so too are attempts to weaken us by threatening the workplace rights that we have contract victories that so many before us fought so hard to win. Everywhere we look, we are seeing our contractual rights slowly being eroded by the legislature, administration, and our employers. And a major attack on our healthcare and our latest imposed contract. Currently teachers and school staff are having their rights to bargain for their healthcare forfeited legislatively. The Senate is getting ready to vote tomorrow 8.30, you should be there, on a nomination for the neutral, I repeat, neutral position on the Vermont Labor Board. And the candidate who is up for nomination is a corporate lawyer who spent their entire career fighting workers, preventing them from unionizing and fighting them at the bargaining table. And as a matter of fact, right to work legislation hangs on the wall of this state house every single session. This state house our state house. And while this is happening, many among us are not even aware that this is going on right here in Vermont. And that this is a very real threat to our livelihood and that of our families and friends. So I know that I don't have to tell you that Michelle is speaking the truth here. Right, all of us here know because we're living this. We're living in 2018. And these are hard times for union members right now. These are hard times for working people right now. These are hard times for the working class because that's what we are. We are the working class. And we got here today because of a trick that the other class, the ruling class, the 1%, has used since ancient times to keep the workers down. I'm talking about divide and conquer. I'm talking about pit working people against other working people. Divide us by race, by language, by gender, by what trade we are in, by what nationality we are, what language we speak so we don't pick our heads up and see who we should really be fighting. Divide and conquer. That's how they've gotten away with what they've done to workers in this country. That's how Donald Trump and Paul Ryan and Scott Walker win in states like Wisconsin and Michigan. Union states. That's how the Koch brothers are planning to take down public sector unions once the Supreme Court rules on Janus this spring, paving the way for national right to work legislation. Boom! And that's exactly what Phil Scott and his allies are doing right now to my union from NEA, pitting communities against teachers, trying to force us to give up local bargaining for healthcare. So he can impose a contract on teachers across the state. Hey, that sound familiar over in the BSEA? But we also know the answer to these tactics. We know how to break their back. We know how to build power to demand the working conditions, the living conditions, the social conditions that we all deserve. We organize. We build power and we fight. We do what our brothers and sisters in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, West Virginia are doing. We do the work to build the relationships in the community. We form solidarity across unions. We reach out to other organizations, other workers whose fight is also our fight. And we develop the common vision of what we're all fighting for and we make demands that benefit our members and advance the collective good. We fight for better healthcare, not just for our members, but for our communities, because we know that healthcare is a human right. Hey, just a second. We fight for living wage, not just for union workers, but for all workers, because a living wage and work with dignity is a human right. We fight to protect our contracts, but we also have to fight to protect the social contract because that's the only way we win what we all deserve. We've got to be united. And it's time to bring our voices together. It's time to stop protecting management and politicians from workers and from the impact, the power of our voices united. I'm a history teacher and I'll tell you, no battle in labor history was ever won. Ever gained by complacency and give-backs doesn't work that way. That's why we're Vermont Labor United. Michelle? Members from many local unions have begun working together to bring rank and file allies and advocates from unions across Vermont together to educate and organize as well as to identify opportunities to join together to fight for our rights together. Where we once stood alone, we will stand together. We have learned that when we stand alone, they work to discredit us. They tell us we're not doing things the Vermont way. They attempt to instill fear in us and they try to stop members from standing up and taking action retaliation and worse. They may attempt to silent and discredit our voices but we are here today to say that the workers will be silent no more. I invite you to stand with us and stand united. We are Vermont Labor United. I'm going to end with a quote from one of the labor activists who was hung following the tragic events in 1886 at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices they strangle today. Solidarity! When we fight, we need to change that. So the Vermont College of Ethics Studies and Socialist Introduction we drafted the bill introduced by Representative Kaye Cation Bill. So we need support. Cation going around that we'll be submitting to legislatures again, community forum on the 9th of May at 6 p.m. here in room 11. Follow us, there's flyers that are people giving around and now I want to introduce you who's going to give us some amazing music. Yeah, we're standing here together, standing up for human rights, justice, workers' rights. I'm here to put some of these words to music and call this song Peaceful Persistence. That's what it's going to take for us to make change. I wrote this during the Occupy movement and even though we're not camping out in our cities and towns Occupy is alive and well. Sorry if you can't hear the uke too much but it's there. Our issues are one big issue. How many people understand that? It's mob fight and mob fight is your fight and your fight is her fight people's campaign a national call for moral revival and we do have a portion of the poor people's campaign here in Vermont that is kicked off I'm a tri-chair. There's a lot of training that's going on. We're representing a nonviolent moral fusion direct action which includes civil disobedience which is going to be happening starting on the 14th of May through 40 days thereafter. How many people already knew about that? A couple of things on how you can get involved this is an action talk here if you can take your phones out you can down 90975 and just text the word moral and you will be updated and you will be plugged into the campaign and you will be made aware of a series of events that will be happening leading up to during and after the 40 days of civil disobedience. For years we've seen a kind of forward issues of systemic racism poverty, militarism there was a time when our nation was fighting a war against poverty now it's seen through a wage and a war on the poor. Our social fabric is stretched thin by widening income inequality while politicians criminalize the poor. Fan flames of racism and xenophobia to divide the poor and still from the poor to give tax breaks to the richest neighbors and budget increases to our bloated military. The forces of white supremacy and unchecked corporate greed continue to gain more power and influence both in state houses across the nation and the highest levels of our federal government. Today one in every two Americans are poor or low income while millions of children and adults continue to live without access to healthcare, housing, clean water and good jobs. In time the issues of systemic racism and poverty have been forced to our moral narrative and claims that a limited focus on our personal morality should overshadow and supplant the commitment to public morality rooted in a critique of greed, racism and injustice. At this time of continued political, economic and moral crisis with the lives of the most vulnerable and the spirits of all under vicious attack people in growing numbers around the country are fighting back for their lives communities and also their deepest values. There is a resounding call today. There is a resounding call to reclaim the moral soul of this nation. We need a poor people's campaign, a national call for a moral revival. I just wanted to update you on a couple of things and get you out of here because I'm getting ready to go drink some beer. So what's going down what I want you to know about, hi Peter Kellan what I want you to know about today which is most important is there's an art build there's an art build that's going to be in Goddard College this weekend in support of the poor people's campaign by the make how many people heard of the make okay so get over there fourth fifth and sixth of May I think on the fifth of May there's also going to be some kind of dance party that's happening at the Hay Barn so you can get over there and shake it up a little bit okay. I see you out there Bobby the other thing I wanted to make you aware of is on the 12th there's going to be some training and what you need to do is we're not necessarily going to put all of the training locations out right now but just go on to poor people's campaign vt.org poor people's campaign vt.org and you'll be able to find more details surrounding the training that's going to be happening in the upcoming days okay again we are in desperate need of a poor people's campaign a national call for a more revival for too long have we sat on the side and watched politicians for too long have we sat on the side and wondered where our next clean water was going to come from if we were ever going to make $15 an hour whether or not we're going to have healthcare all of these issues and this narrative of scarcity and this moral narrative that has been distorted since the creation of this nation has got to go how many people understand that I'm going to leave you with a song and the song is everybody's got a right to live how many people believe that and the song simply goes like this and you sing it everybody's got a right to live everybody's got a right to live everybody's got a it comes from a bunch of different movements it was sung by the American Civil Rights movement by the United Farm Workers and it continues to be an anthem that connects a lot of different struggles this is the anti-war movement it's all about the interconnections of our struggles, of our aspirations this is we shall not be moved we'll sing it in English and then in Spanish we shall not we shall not can dream let's say human rights council, thank you for coming out